Delivering trauma-informed support for child sexual abuse victims in Victoria: Mapping the knowledge gaps and training needs of the specialist sectors

This research project, funded by the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse, aimed to gather evidence that SASVic can use to strengthen the capability of specialist child sexual abuse workers in Victoria to provide trauma-informed and compassionate supports. This project helped SASVic to understand the current knowledge and training needs of key sector workforces and identify opportunity to embed trauma-informed curricula into key qualification pathways.

The project used a mixed methods approach including a practitioner survey, focus groups and interviews to explore the key qualification pathways and knowledge and training gaps of the specialist child sexual abuse practitioners in Victoria.

Why was this project important?

Since the 2015 Royal Commission into Family Violence, Victoria has seen significant mapping of and investment in the family violence workforce, including strengthening links between family and sexual violence responses and workforces. However, there has been comparatively little investment or focus on the child sexual abuse workforce during this time, despite the co-occurence and interrelated nature of family violence and child sexual abuse.

As a new peak body, we felt that we had an opportunity learn how we can more efficiently and consistently support, sustain and grow the specialist workforce to respond to the increasing demand of both recent and historic child sexual abuse.

What is the specialist child sexual abuse workforce?

The specialist sexual assault sector is made up of 18 member services supporting approximately 20,000 people impacted by sexual violence every year, a high percentage of whom are survivors of child sexual abuse. All 18 services work with diverse child sexual abuse victim survivors.

The child sexual abuse workforce requires specialist capabilities, knowledge and skills, meaning that the specialist sexual assault sector invests a lot of time and effort into training new graduates and building their confidence. However, as individual services experience growing demand and face workforce shortages, this becomes more difficult to provide to new graduates.

Specialist sexual assault services have incredible expertise built up over many decades. Specialist practitioners often don’t recognise the strengths that they have and the impact that they are having. It’s important to acknowledge that although this research was focused on knowledge gaps, the specialist sexual assault sector holds a huge amount of practice wisdom and expertise.

What have we learned about the qualfication pathways into the workforce?

There is no documented qualification pathway to work in the specialist sexual assault sector in Victoria. However, most services require a bachelor’s degree in social work, psychology or other relevant fields as a minimum qualification for a counsellor advocate position.

These current pathways do not prepare practitioners to compassionately respond to child sexual abuse despite the prevalence of child sexual abuse across our community, and the longevity of its impact on survivors. Providing in-depth therapetic support to children who have experienced sexual abuse in specialist settings requires:

  • expanded core knowledge and practice base

  • encompassing foundational feminist theories

  • good understanding of child development

  • therapeutic modalities and their implementation at different developmental stages

  • additional therapeutic models such as play therapy and family therapy (when working with non-offending family members).

The Australian Child Maltreatment Study tells us that 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 boys are impacted by child sexual abuse.

What have we learned from practitioners?

Sexual violence practitioners indicated wanting to grow skills and knowledge related to addressing barriers faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, culturally diverse individuals, those with lived experience and people with disability.

They also indicated that they would like to develope further specialisation in child sexual abuse, but lack the time, resources or opportunity to engage in external training due to high caseloads.

Other areas that practitioners wanted development in included:

  • legal training

  • understanding the connection between child sexual abuse, self-harm and eating disorders

  • accessing and providing high quality, regular clinical supervision to support the translation of knowledge and skills into practice.

Practitioners should have the opportunity to keep learning and improving, and to see the the impacts of the critical work that they do. This is the only way that we can retain a thrive workforce.

What is next?

We look forward to working with the National Centre to translate this research into action and support the development of the specialist child sexual abuse workforce.

Read the report and the summary

Sexual violence is being forced, pressured or tricked into doing sexual things when you don’t want to. It is often a crime and can take many forms, including child sexual abuse, image-based sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual assault. It can affect people of all genders throughout their lives and can be perpetrated by strangers or people who are known to the survivor.

It can be difficult to speak about sexual violence. Specialist sexual assault services support adults and children who have experienced sexual violence, whether recently or a long time ago. Harmful sexual behaviour services provide specialist support to children and families. For more information about specialist sexual assault services in Victoria and where to find them, visit peak.sasvic.org.au/servicemap

Getting support

Funding acknowledgement

This research was funded by the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse. SASVic would like to thank the team for their invaluable support in creating this report.